Can aid end aid?

We put the question to six campaigners and opinion-formers.

A Nigerian refugee plays football at a UNHCR camp in Ras Ajdir, Tunisia, near th
A Nigerian refugee plays football at a UNHCR camp in Ras Ajdir, Tunisia, near the border with Libya. Credit: Nadia Shira Cohen/New York Times/Eyevine

Annie Lennox

Singer and HIV campaigner

Last World Aids Day, President Obama spoke about the beginning of the end of Aids – when an Aids-free generation is born and 15 million people are on treatment. That we can even contemplate the beginning of the end of Aids is thanks to aid. Global aid efforts, such as those delivered through the Global Fund and the US Pepfar plan, mean that today 6.6 million people receive live-saving treatment for HIV, and we can prevent a mother passing HIV on to her unborn child.

When aid is spent on global health it doesn’t just fund treatment but helps countries scale up their response and spurs the private sector to take action. It gives millions the prospect of a healthy future in which they can contribute to society. This is the key to ending aid. But we can’t get ahead of ourselves: every day 1,000 children are born with HIV. We can’t stop yet.

3 comments

dailymail reader's picture

"Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa - rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled.
A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour.
In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.
With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.”
— Charles Darwin

Duane's picture

Charles Darwin never said any such thing. That quotation comes from a 1905 book written by Thomas Dixon,

Ahmed Sayed's picture

Hi all,
I think it is good to have several opinions and diverse viewpoints.
I think this article missed the political aspect of AID and how sometimes it is used to align the targets with certain goals.
I also believe that there is no monitor of how successful or effective aid is to be able to forecast the rate at which it might diminish!!!! I do not know of such a monitoring body.
Please put in mind that some times providing governments might intentially overlook the embezzelment of such aid (i.e. low efficacy in really aiding) if the target can show the correct alignment to provider's goals in that region.

AID is a huge game, and I am posing the question of "is it really meant to stop AID?."
thanks
A/

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